The Project Gutenberg eBook, An Introduction to Philosophy, by George

PART VI - ON THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY 
 
CHAPTER XXII - The Value Of The Study Of Philosophy 
 
80.  The Question of Practical Utility.    
81.  Why Philosophical Studies are Useful.    
82.  Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Religion. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII - Why We Should Study The History Of Philosophy 
 
83.  The Prominence given to the Subject.    
84.  The Especial Importance of Historical Studies to Reflective Thought.    
85.  The Value of Different Points of View.    
86.  Philosophy as Poetry and Philosophy as Science.    
87.  How to read the History of Philosophy. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV - Some Practical Admonitions 
 
88.  Be prepared to enter upon a New Way of Looking at Things.    
89.  Be willing to consider Possibilities which at first strike one as Absurd.    
90.  Do not have too much Respect for Authority.    
91.  Remember that Ordinary Rules of Evidence Apply.    
92.  Aim at Clearness and Simplicity.    
93.  Do not hastily accept a Doctrine. 
 
NOTES 
 
  
 
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Chap I - Meaning of “Philosophy” 
AN INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY 
 
I. INTRODUCTORY 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
THE MEANING OF THE WORD “PHILOSOPHY” IN THE PAST AND IN THE PRESENT 
 
I must warn the reader at the outset that the title of this chapter seems to promise a great deal 
more than he will find carried out in the chapter itself.  To tell all that philosophy has meant in 
the past, and all that it means to various classes of men in the present, would be a task of no 
small magnitude, and one quite beyond the scope of such a volume as this.  But it is not 
impossible to give within small compass a brief indication, at least, of what the word once 
signified, to show how its signification has undergone changes, and to point out to what sort of a 
discipline or group of disciplines educated men are apt to apply the word, notwithstanding their 
differences of opinion as to the truth or falsity of this or that particular doctrine.  Why certain 
subjects of investigation have come to be grouped together and to be regarded as falling within 
the province of the philosopher, rather than certain other subjects, will, I hope, be made clear in 
the body of the work.  Only an indication can be given in this chapter. 
 
1. THE BEGINNINGS OF PHILOSOPHY. – The Greek historian Herodotus (484-424 B.C.) 
appears to have been the first to use the verb “to philosophize.”  He makes Croesus tell Solon 
how he has heard that he “from a desire of knowledge has, philosophizing, journeyed through 
many lands.”  The word “philosophizing” seems to indicate that Solon pursued knowledge for its 
own sake, and was what we call an investigator.  As for the word “philosopher” (etymologically, 
a lover of wisdom), a certain somewhat unreliable tradition traces it back to Pythagoras (about 
582-500 B.C.).  As told by Cicero, the story is that, in a conversation with Leon, the ruler of 
Phlius, in the Peloponnesus, he described himself as a philosopher, and said that his business was 
an investigation into the nature of things. 
 
At any rate, both the words “philosopher” and “philosophy” are freely used in the writings of the 
disciples of Socrates (470-399 B.C.), and it is possible that he was the first to make use of them.  
The seeming modesty of the title philosopher – for etymologically it is a modest one, though it 
has managed to gather a very different signification with the lapse of time – the modesty of the 
title would naturally appeal to a man who claimed so much ignorance, as Socrates; and Plato 
represents him as distinguishing between the lover of wisdom and the wise, on the ground that 
God alone may be called wise.  From that date to this the word “philosopher” has remained with 
us, and it has meant many things to many men.  But for centuries the philosopher has not been 
simply the investigator, nor has he been simply the lover of wisdom. 
 
An investigation into the origin of words, however interesting in itself, can tell us little of the 
uses to which words are put after they have come into being.  If we turn from etymology to 
history, and review the labors of the men whom the world has agreed to call philosophers, we are 
struck by the fact that those who head the list chronologically appear to have been occupied with 
crude physical speculations, with attempts to guess what the world is made out of, rather than 
with that somewhat vague something that we call philosophy to-day. 
 
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Chap I - Meaning of “Philosophy” 
 
Students of the history of philosophy usually begin their studies with the speculations of the 
Greek philosopher Thales (b. 624 B.C.).  We are told that he assumed water to be the universal 
principle out of which all things are made, and that he maintained that “all things are full of 
gods.”  We find that Anaximander, the next in the list, assumed as the source out of which all 
things proceed and that to which they all return “the infinite and indeterminate”; and that 
Anaximenes, who was perhaps his pupil, took as his principle the all-embracing air. 
 
This trio constitutes the Ionian school of philosophy, the earliest of the Greek schools; and one 
who reads for the first time the few vague statements which seem to constitute the sum of their 
contributions to human knowledge is impelled to wonder that so much has been made of the 
men. 
 
This wonder disappears, however, when one realizes that the appearance of these thinkers was 
really a momentous thing.  For these men turned their faces away from the poetical and 
mythologic way of accounting for things, which had obtained up to their time, and set their faces 
toward Science.  Aristotle shows us how Thales may have been led to the formulation of his 
main thesis by an observation of the phenomena of nature.  Anaximander saw in the world in 
which he lived the result of a process of evolution.  Anaximenes explains the coming into being 
of fire, wind, clouds, water, and earth, as due to a condensation and expansion of the universal 
principle, air.  The boldness of their speculations we may explain as due to a courage born of 
ignorance, but the explanations they offer are scientific in spirit, at least. 
 
Moreover, these men do not stand alone.  They are the advance guard of an army whose latest 
representatives are the men who are enlightening the world at the present day.  The evolution of 
science – taking that word in the broad sense to mean organized and systematized knowledge – 
must be traced in the works of the Greek philosophers from Thales down.  Here we have the 
source and the rivulet to which we can trace back the mighty stream which is flowing past our 
own doors. Apparently insignificant in its beginnings, it must still for a while seem insignificant 
to the man who follows with an unreflective eye the course of the current. 
 
It would take me too far afield to give an account of the Greek schools which immediately 
succeeded the Ionic: to tell of the Pythagoreans, who held that all things were constituted by 
numbers; of the Eleatics, who held that “only Being is,” and denied the possibility of change, 
thereby reducing the shifting panorama of the things about us to a mere delusive world of 
appearances; of Heraclitus, who was so impressed by the constant flux of things that he summed 
up his view of nature in the words: “Everything flows”; of Empedocles, who found his 
explanation of the world in the combination of the four elements, since become traditional, earth, 
water, fire, and air; of Democritus, who developed a materialistic atomism which reminds one 
strongly of the doctrine of atoms as it has appeared in modern science; of Anaxagoras, who 
traced the system of things to the setting in order of an infinite multiplicity of different elements, 
– “seeds of things,” – which setting in order was due to the activity of the finest of things, Mind. 
 
It is a delight to discover the illuminating thoughts which came to the minds of these men; and, 
on the other hand, it is amusing to see how recklessly they launched themselves on boundless 
seas when they were unprovided with chart and compass.  They were like brilliant children, who 
 
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Chap I - Meaning of “Philosophy” 
know little of the dangers of the great world, but are ready to undertake anything.  These 
philosophers regarded all knowledge as their province, and did not despair of governing so great 
a realm.  They were ready to explain the whole world and everything in it.  Of course, this can 
only mean that they had little conception of how much there is to explain, and of what is meant 
by scientific explanation. 
 
It is characteristic of this series of philosophers that their attention was directed very largely 
upon the external world.  It was natural that this should be so.  Both in the history of the race and 
in that of the individual, we find that the attention is seized first by material things, and that it is 
long before a clear conception of the mind and of its knowledge is arrived at.  Observation 
precedes reflection.  When we come to think definitely about the mind, we are all apt to make 
use of notions which we have derived from our experience of external things.  The very words 
we use to denote mental operations are in many instances taken from this outer realm.  We 
“direct” the attention; we speak of “apprehension,” of “conception,” of “intuition.”  Our 
knowledge is “clear” or “obscure”; an oration is “brilliant”; an emotion is “sweet” or “bitter.”  
What wonder that, as we read over the fragments that have come down to us from the Pre-
Socratic philosophers, we should be struck by the fact that they sometimes leave out altogether 
and sometimes touch lightly upon a number of those things that we regard to-day as peculiarly 
within the province of the philosopher.  They busied themselves with the world as they saw it, 
and certain things had hardly as yet come definitely within their horizon. 
 
2. THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY AT ITS HEIGHT. – The next succeeding period sees certain 
classes of questions emerge into prominence which had attracted comparatively little attention 
from the men of an earlier day. Democritus of Abdera, to whom reference has been made above, 
belongs chronologically to this latter period, but his way of thinking makes us class him with the 
earlier philosophers.  It was characteristic of these latter that they assumed rather naively that 
man can look upon the world and can know it, and can by thinking about it succeed in giving a 
reasonable account of it.  That there may be a difference between the world as it really is and the 
world as it appears to man, and that it may be impossible for man to attain to a knowledge of the 
absolute truth of things, does not seem to have occurred to them. 
 
The fifth century before Christ was, in Greece, a time of intense intellectual ferment.  One is 
reminded, in reading of it, of the splendid years of the Renaissance in Italy, of the awakening of 
the human mind to a vigorous life which cast off the bonds of tradition and insisted upon the 
right of free and unfettered development.  Athens was the center of this intellectual activity. 
 
In this century arose the Sophists, public teachers who busied themselves with all departments of 
human knowledge, but seemed to lay no little emphasis upon certain questions that touched very 
nearly the life of man.  Can man attain to truth at all – to a truth that is more than a mere truth to 
him, a seeming truth?  Whence do the laws derive their authority?  Is there such a thing as 
justice, as right?  It was with such questions as these that the Sophists occupied themselves, and 
such questions as these have held the attention of mankind ever since. When they make their 
appearance in the life of a people or of an individual man, it means that there has been a rebirth, 
a birth into the life of reflection. 
 
 
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Chap I - Meaning of “Philosophy” 
When Socrates, that greatest of teachers, felt called upon to refute the arguments of these men, 
he met them, so to speak, on their own ground, recognizing that the subjects of which they 
discoursed were, indeed, matter for scientific investigation.  His attitude seemed to many 
conservative persons in his day a dangerous one; he was regarded as an innovator; he taught men 
to think and to raise questions where, before, the traditions of the fathers had seemed a sufficient 
guide to men’s actions. 
 
And, indeed, he could not do otherwise.  Men had learned to reflect, and there had come into 
existence at least the beginnings of what we now sometimes rather loosely call the mental and 
moral sciences.  In the works of Socrates’ disciple Plato (428-347 B.C.) and in those of Plato’s 
disciple Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), abundant justice is done to these fields of human activity.  
These two, the greatest among the Greek philosophers, differ from each other in many things, but 
it is worthy of remark that they both seem to regard the whole sphere of human knowledge as 
their province. 
 
Plato is much more interested in the moral sciences than in the physical, but he, nevertheless, 
feels called upon to give an account of how the world was made and out of what sort of 
elements.  He evidently does not take his own account very seriously, and recognizes that he is 
on uncertain ground.  But he does not consider the matter beyond his jurisdiction. 
 
As for Aristotle, that wonderful man seems to have found it possible to represent worthily every 
science known to his time, and to have marked out several new fields for his successors to 
cultivate.  His philosophy covers physics, cosmology, zooelogy, logic, metaphysics, ethics, 
psychology, politics and economics, rhetoric and poetics. 
 
Thus we see that the task of the philosopher was much the same at the period of the highest 
development of the Greek philosophy that it had been earlier.  He was supposed to give an 
account of the system of things.  But the notion of what it means to give an account of the system 
of things had necessarily undergone some change.  The philosopher had to be something more 
than a natural philosopher. 
 
3. PHILOSOPHY AS A GUIDE TO LIFE. – At the close of the fourth century before Christ 
there arose the schools of the Stoics, the Epicureans, and the Skeptics.  In them we seem to find a 
somewhat new conception of philosophy – philosophy appears as chiefly a guide to life.  The 
Stoic emphasizes the necessity of living “according to nature,” and dwells upon the character of 
the wise man; the Epicurean furnishes certain selfish maxims for getting through life as 
pleasantly as possible; the Skeptic counsels apathy, an indifference to all things, – blessed is he 
who expects nothing, for he shall not be disappointed. 
 
And yet, when we examine more closely these systems, we find a conception of philosophy not 
really so very different from that which had obtained before.  We do not find, it is true, that 
disinterested passion for the attainment of truth which is the glory of science.  Man seems quite 
too much concerned with the problem of his own happiness or unhappiness; he has grown 
morbid.  Nevertheless, the practical maxims which obtain in each of these systems are based 
upon a certain view of the system of things as a whole. 
 
 
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Chap I - Meaning of “Philosophy” 
The Stoic tells us of what the world consists; what was the beginning and what will be the end of 
things; what is the relation of the system of things to God.  He develops a physics and a logic as 
well as a system of ethics.  The Epicurean informs us that the world originated in a rain of atoms 
through space; he examines into the foundations of human knowledge; and he proceeds to make 
himself comfortable in a world from which he has removed those disturbing elements, the gods.  
The Skeptic decides that there is no such thing as truth, before he enunciates the dogma that it is 
not worth while to worry about anything.  The philosophy of each school includes a view of the 
system of things as a whole.  The philosopher still regarded the universe of knowledge as his 
province. 
 
4. PHILOSOPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. – I cannot do more than mention Neo-Platonism, 
that half Greek and half Oriental system of doctrine which arose in the third century after Christ, 
the first system of importance after the schools mentioned above.  But I must not pass it by 
without pointing out that the Neo-Platonic philosopher undertook to give an account of the 
origin, development, and end of the whole system of things. 
 
In the Middle Ages there gradually grew up rather a sharp distinction between those things that 
can be known through the unaided reason and those things that can only be known through a 
supernatural revelation. The term “philosophy” came to be synonymous with knowledge attained 
by the natural light of reason.  This seems to imply some sort of a limitation to the task of the 
philosopher.  Philosophy is not synonymous with all knowledge. 
 
But we must not forget to take note of the fact that philosophy, even with this limitation, 
constitutes a pretty wide field.  It covers both the physical and the moral sciences.  Nor should 
we omit to notice that the scholastic philosopher was at the same time a theologian.  Albert the 
Great and St. Thomas Aquinas, the famous scholastics of the thirteenth century, had to write a 
“Summa Theologiae,” or system of theology, as well as to treat of the other departments of 
human knowledge. 
 
Why were these men not overwhelmed with the task set them by the tradition of their time?  It 
was because the task was not, after all, so great as a modern man might conceive it to be.  Gil 
Blas, in Le Sage’s famous romance, finds it possible to become a skilled physician in the 
twinkling of an eye, when Dr. Sangrado has imparted to him the secret that the remedy for all 
diseases is to be found in bleeding the patient and in making him drink copiously of hot water.  
When little is known about things, it does not seem impossible for one man to learn that little.  
During the Middle Ages and the centuries preceding, the physical sciences had a long sleep.  
Men were much more concerned in the thirteenth century to find out what Aristotle had said than 
they were to address questions to nature.  The special sciences, as we now know them, had not 
been called into existence. 
 
5. THE MODERN PHILOSOPHY. – The submission of men’s minds to the authority of 
Aristotle and of the church gradually gave way.  A revival of learning set in.  Men turned first of 
all to a more independent choice of authorities, and then rose to the conception of a philosophy 
independent of authority, of a science based upon an observation of nature, of a science at first 
hand.  The special sciences came into being. 
 
 
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Chap I - Meaning of “Philosophy” 
But the old tradition of philosophy as universal knowledge remained. If we pass over the men of 
the transition period and turn our attention to Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and Rene Descartes 
(1596-1650), the two who are commonly regarded as heading the list of the modern 
philosophers, we find both of them assigning to the philosopher an almost unlimited field. 
 
Bacon holds that philosophy has for its objects God, man, and nature, and he regards it as within 
his province to treat of “philosophia prima” (a sort of metaphysics, though he does not call it by 
this name), of logic, of physics and astronomy, of anthropology, in which he includes 
psychology, of ethics, and of politics.  In short, he attempts to map out the whole field of human 
knowledge, and to tell those who work in this corner of it or in that how they should set about 
their task. 
 
As for Descartes, he writes of the trustworthiness of human knowledge, of the existence of God, 
of the existence of an external world, of the human soul and its nature, of mathematics, physics, 
cosmology, physiology, and, in short, of nearly everything discussed by the men of his day.  No 
man can accuse this extraordinary Frenchman of a lack of appreciation of the special sciences 
which were growing up.  No one in his time had a better right to be called a scientist in the 
modern sense of the term.  But it was not enough for him to be a mere mathematician, or even a 
worker in the physical sciences generally.  He must be all that has been mentioned above. 
 
The conception of philosophy as of a something that embraces all departments of human 
knowledge has not wholly passed away even in our day.  I shall not dwell upon Spinoza (1632-
1677), who believed it possible to deduce a world a priori with mathematical precision; upon 
Christian Wolff (1679-1754), who defined philosophy as the knowledge of the causes of what is 
or comes into being; upon Fichte (1762-1814), who believed that the philosopher, by mere 
thinking, could lay down the laws of all possible future experience; upon Schelling (1775-1854), 
who, without knowing anything worth mentioning about natural science, had the courage to 
develop a system of natural philosophy, and to condemn such investigators as Boyle and 
Newton; upon Hegel (1770-1831), who undertakes to construct the whole system of reality out 
of concepts, and who, with his immediate predecessors, brought philosophy for a while into 
more or less disrepute with men of a scientific turn of mind.  I shall come down quite to our own 
times, and consider a man whose conception of philosophy has had and still has a good deal of 
influence, especially with the general public – with those to whom philosophy is a thing to be 
taken up in moments of leisure, and cannot be the serious pursuit of a life. 
 
“Knowledge of the lowest kind,” says Herbert Spencer, “is un-unified knowledge; Science is